Sublime Reality Forum

discover the greatest human illusionand ways to overcome it

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the need of the new terms 'skeletonism' and 'sublimism'?

There is a need for these new terms, because there aren't any terms already in use to address these issues.

Materialism includes skeletonism, but these terms are not identical. Skeletonism can also be found to some extend in spiritual schools. Supernaturalism and vitalism are not identical with sublimism. Supernaturalism is theological, and sublimism is non-affirmative about theology (both theists and atheists can be sublimists). Unlike sublimism, vitalism argues that only a non-physical life-force could produce certain organic compounds.

Unlike other terms, the terms skeletonism and sublimism focus on self identity.

Does sublimism hold that the sublime reality is not detectable with physical means, thus becoming non-falsifiable and therefore unscientific?

The principle of falsifiability means that it must be possible to prove that a theory is wrong with empirical methods, else the theory is considered unscientific. The problem with this principle is that it is provincial thinking. It includes the provincial bias or doctrine that reality is only matter and science is thus restricted to matter. Such materialistic bias has led to a provincial science, or in blunt language, a castrated science deprived of its sublime dimensions.

The basis of such provincial, materialistic thinking is skeletonism, identification with the material body. If our self is limited to matter, then there is no way how we can ever perceive anything beyond matter. If this was true, then provincial falsifiability would be agreeable. But since we are beyond the material body (as shown by sublimism), if we discover our sublime nature and senses, we can perceive the sublime reality, and sublime elements like the sublime self are discovered to be falsifiable. To understand this, however, we have to distinguish between provincial falsifiability (which includes the bias that reality is limited to matter) and universal falsifiability (which does not exclude sublime perception).

Sublimism doesn't hold that the sublime reality is entirely non-physical, although it could be. Thus in the case of the sublime reality being non-physical, the argument of non-falsifiability applies. In that case, in the provincial conception (based on skeletonism, which has been exposed to be wrong), sublimism would be non-falsifiable. In the universal, non-exclusive conception, however, sublimism would still be falsifiable and scientific, because the sublime reality can be perceived by sublime senses.

Do we really have to be so extreme and say that we are either only the material body or only a sublime being - can't we say that we are both?

Most people live as if we are both, even though they may be either skeletonists or sublimists, because just as the sublimists cannot avoid the material body as long as they are living in it, the skeletonists cannot avoid at least the notion of an individual self in the classical sense, especially when it comes to ethics and love. However, we cannot overlook the fact that skeletonism and sublimism exclude each other. Either we survive death; then we are not the material body, or we don't, and then we are not a sublime being. Hence according to logical reasoning, although we are now in a combination, ultimately we cannot be both; we are either the material body, a sublime being beyond it. However, this does not mean that if we are a sublime being, we cannot possess a body, because there is the possibility of a sublime body.

If we are not the material body, why do we identify so much with it, and why do we feel pleasure and pain when the body feels pleasure and pain?

This is because our self identifies very strongly with the material body and its designations (the factor responsible for such an identification varies in different wisdom traditions). If this identification is overcome, for example during dreaming, we can easily dream of being inside a bird's body and flying high above the earth. When some parts of our body are under local anesthesia, the material sensual connection to those parts are lost, and we don't feel pleasure and pain of these parts anymore, although we are not less the same person as before anesthesia.